I brought my HP mediasmart server with me from the UK to the Philippines

My server does not boot. The health light (the third one from the left) flashes aqua and the disc light bars above do not come on at all. Pressing the power button on the back does not shut the server down, I have to force shutdown. However, I can reach the shared folders on the dics via my laptop wirelessly.

I could not access the server via the WHS icon and tried to reload it but that erased the existing version and the new one will not load as when it gets to the page about backups it says backup is not working and try again. If one cancells it deletes the new version.

So I have the server and WHS unconnectable. I have read the advise on server recovery but the server did not come with a recovery disc, indeed no discs, and although I have emailed the UK supplier, so far I have not had a response. HP do not provide a downloadable recover disc service. I am unsure after using the recovery disc whether I also need the software instalation disc.

Is there anyway of finding a recovery disc and any other needs?

My worry is of course that I am unable to use my squeezebox and access my music.

Any assistance gratefully received.

John

Hi John,

First it might help if you mention which model server you have as each server model has its own unique Server Recovery Disk. I would try contacting HP Direct and explain your situation to them. HP has in the past always been accomodating in supply recovery disk sets.

Also keep an eye open on eBay as from time to time people will sell their disks as they sell their servers in parts. I am not certain how many people in the Phils use Home Servers but I do know many Americans retire there so maybe you could get lucky finding somone there to help you.

As for your Blinking Blue Health light it basically means your server has not completed booting. Something is preventing it from completing the boot process. It could be as simple as a drive with an issue or some sort of files corruption. You could pull each of the drives out, connect it to another comptuer and perform CHKDSK /r on each drive to see if that will correct the issue at hand some times it does other times it does not but in most cases its the right thing to do.

You could back out all your storage pool disks then try to boot the server with only the system drive in which is in the bottom drive bay. If the server boots it will pinch a fit about missing drives and corrupt this and that which is to be expected so just ignore that and shut the server down. Next instert the next drive and reboot. If it boots shut it down and insert another drive until you have done this will all the drives. What your looking for is the drive that prevents the server from booting. Once you find that drive then connect it to another computer and run CHKDSK /r hoping to correct the issue with the drive and if so then your in good shape and you can get your server back online.

If CHKDSK /r is not able to repair the drive then your will need to reboot the server, replace the missing drive and remove the old drive from the storage pool.

In the mean time you can still access some or all of the data on your server by connecting the drive to another computer that can read NTFS drives. Set the computer to see hidden files and folders. The system drive has two partition on it SYS and DATA. If your system drive contains files from the storage pool it will be in the DATA partition. All the storage pool drives are named DATA. The files your looking for will be stored in a hidden folder named DE and with in the DE folder will be a group of Alphanumeric name folders and within those will be your files. At this point DO NOT alter any of the drives you are working with as you will want to preserve them should you need to perform a recovery. Just copy the files you are looking for.

As I understand it WHS likes to group certain types of files together so if you find a folder with music in it chances are it may contain all or most of your music. Any music files missing may be found on another drive. If you had duplication turned on then your data should exist on two drives provided DE had time to duplicate your data. Older files set for duplication should be duplicated while newer files may not be duplicates it just depends on if DE got around to it or not as its not an instantaneous process like RAID so DE is a slower process but it does get the job done.

Good Luck and please let me know if your require additional help. Also I do know some people in the Phils but am not certain if they actually know what a MediaSmart Server is but if I know the model then it never hurts to ask them if they know someone who has one. One of the Post Office Workers here in my area actually travels there twice a year to visit his girlfriend so next time I see him I will ask him about this too.

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Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

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Thank you very much for the reply. I did originally post my question in the EX490 section but it was moved. Thus I have a 490.

I have 4x1T drives. 1 and 2 I bought with the server, 3 and 4 I added about 3 months ago. They are all Western Digital WD10EARS 64mb cache.

I removed the last 3 discs and the server booted but showing red critical but I could use the WHS icon to "get in". It showed the 3 discs missing with the warning about backup etc.

I added the second disc and the same again, it booted with the same messages.

I added the third disc and it did not boot - blue light flashing continuoisly. So I removed it and added the fourth disc into its slot, leaving the third slot empty. It booted but showed the fourth disc as external and healthy.

I put the third disc back and no boot and assume the third is the problem but as it wont boot I cannot use WHS to get in. Whilst my pc has trays for more drives I'm not competant enough to add one I fear. I have a 1T caviar black drive plugged into the sata5 connector on the motherboard.

So, I thought I should post first before taking the drive in to my supplier. When I had the 4th drive in but not the 3rd, it said my music file was corrupt and thus assume some of the misic file is on the corrupt 3rd disc. Does repair format the drive?

I await your further advise before proceeding.

Regards, John

Hi johnrxx99,

The EARS Drives are Advanced Format Drives that either needed to be jumpered or have an Align Utility run on them for proper use with older Operating Systems like WHS which is a modifies Windows Server 2003. Below are a couple links about these drives to help you understand why these drives are special.

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/12 ... me-server/

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011/02 ... mat-drive/

I am not certain at this point how you prepared the drives for use with WHS. There has been much written about the use of these drives within the forums on this site. You could use the Site Search window and search EARS or Advanced Format to read what others have posted and what corrective action they have taken.

As for the red health indicator on your server that your seeing is only there at the moment because a drive is missing. If your able to correct the issue with the drive and place it back into the server for use that red health indicator will go away and with it the messages about file corruption, missing drives, etc.

If you have jumpered the drive or previously ran the Align utility then you can install the drive in another computer and run CHKDSK /r on the drive to repair the issue. If the drive was just installed without the Jumper or Alignment Utility run on it then I am uncertain of how you should proceed to correct the issue at hand which is why I suggest you read the messages in the forums regarding Advanced Format or EARS Drives using the Site Search function.

Good Luck and please let me know if you need additional help.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Hi, I'll read the aspects you have mentioned. I find it strange that they have been working ok for the last 3 months, the news ones that is. The original 2 seem ok still although obviously missing data is on the 2 malfunctioning ones.

Do you think I still need the recovery and other discs?

Regards, John

No you do not need to perform a server recovery and the reason why is that WHS would need to see all your storage pool drives during the recovery process to complete successfuly. All you need to do is see if you can resolve the drive issue and then if the drives are not jumpered or aligned do one or the other and you will be back in business. If you can not resolve the drive issue then you will have to remove the drive from the storage pool but first you may need to install a replacement drive to ensure you have enough room to store the data which was set for duplication that was stored on the drive that was having issues.

Now if you have to remove the drive from the storage pool then you may lose some client backup data if that drive was used to store that type of data since WHS does not backup the client data. To do that you need the ADD-IN BDBB available fromt he ADD-INS tab on the site. Other data you may lose is data that was saved on that drive but not duplicated or if the data was set for duplication and DE never got a chance to duplicate it.

Now your best effort would be to try to recover the drive and then make certain the both your EARS Drives are setup properly for operation in WHS. As you read the links which I have already provided you will see the Advanced Format Drives use 4K Sector Size vs the older drives which use 512Kb Sector Size this is why you either have to jumper the drives or run an Alignment Utility. With the newer WD Advanced Format Drives you would have to run the Alignment Utility as they have done away with the jumper.

So work on getting the issue with the failed drive resolved and if you can resolve it then you will be in good shape then correct any setup issues with the EARS Drives.

Good Luck

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Wow, I've read the main posts and tend to think life is too short, lol.

Having looked closer, the disc with the OS, number 1, is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB. The connector has a 4 pin slot. The 2nd disc is the EARS with the 8 pin slot and as it says on the sticker, it has probably been through the WD Align software before being inserted as there is no jumper.

I ask the following in the hope there is another solution. Assuming I can get a jumper, is it possible to simply dump the 2 new drives and insert another 2 new ones with the jumper or after using the Align software? The amount of data stored on them was not great although I appreciate it could be essential. As I seem to be able to to get into the shared folders I can always transfer the music file to an external 2t disc beforehand and dump the server if it doesn't work. The music file are far more important than the server.

What a nightmare!

Regarding your last post, I am still confused on how to remove the problem unaligned discs from the storeage pool when the server doesn't boot with them in and thus unable to use WHS to remove them. Sorry if this is in the other posts but I havnt yet seen anyone address that point.

I am also having a problem with this blue flashing light issue.

To start with I noticed my server was no longer on the network, I looked at it and there were no error lights, all drive lights were on.

I powered it down with the button on the back, and then tried booting it up, it has now been flashing the blue light with no drive lights on for two days.

Tonight I have removed my two storage drives and put just the system drive in, as well as disconnecting any USB drives, and I'm still getting the same issue.

Googling shows some sites suggesting the blue flashing is the server running a recovery/chkdsk and it takes time, should I be more patient or is something else wrong?

Will my data be lost without buying another few drives to back them up to before rebuilding the server from scratch?

Your data will remain safe provided you had duplication turned on and more to the point that DE had time to duplicate the data on the server should there be an issue with one of the storage pool drives. To confirm that your data is there you could install one or both of your storage pool drives in a computer, set the computer to be able to see hidden files and folders. All your storage pool drives will be named DATA and contain a hidden folder called DE and inside DE will be other folders with long alphnumeric names and in those folder you will be able to find your data.

If you want to play it safe then copy that data to a location of your choice. If you are going to perform a server recovery with your storage pool drives and desire to preserve your data DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING on your storage pool drives.

There are things you can do to test your drives and they are listed by me in previous posts in this message thread.

Good Luck and let me know if you should have additional questions.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

If a server recovery is done, should it be done with the storage pool drives in, or removed? Will I lose data one way and not the other?

Should running chkdsk be fine via a USB adapter? As I no longer have a desktop PC. I replaced it with the server and laptops.

There are two types of recoveries they are as follows:

Factory Recovery ~ This recovery will format your storage pool drives. Use this if you want to completely start over.

Server Recovery ~ This recovery will preserver the data on the storage pool drives and is the most desirable recovery performed. You will need to have your Storage Pool Drives installed in the server as WHS will need to see them during the recovery process.

You can connect your storage pool drives to a notebook using a USB-SATA Cable, USB Docking Station or USB Connected enclosure. If you have an eSATA Port on your notebook then you can use any eSATA Connected device that you can install your hard drives in.

Regardless of how you connect the drives if your computer can see them and can read NTFS Formated Drives your good to go.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Hi Sicarius123, The network issue may be another aspect of this server. I've found twonky to be totally unreliable and have deleted it as the cpu was always at 100%. In my endevours I found a file with over 9000 stored playlist files which I suspect it was reading.

As regards the blue flashing light, I copied the shared server files to a new drive I put in my pc, ( could read them even with the blue light flashing), then took out the 2 nonjumpered new discs from the server. That allowed me to restart the server and use the WHS connector. I "removed" the vacant discs which took quite a while, rebooted and everything was fine after resolving the backup requirement. I lost all my video files, a couple of photo file and 2 cd's, which out of 3000 is not bad. As I'd copied the files it no problem anyway.

I've used the old discs in my pc and now with so much space there I use the server switched off and merely to store a copy of my files as I've found it a hassle and with twonky and WHS being a legacy pieces of software I feel much happier without it. I can play everything from my pc over the network with the latest software and in truth I wish I had never bought the server. Furthermore, HP give no customer service and as I'm without the discs and no hope of getting them from HP I have no faith in the server. Just experience I guess.

I actually managed to fix mine up, I ran chkdsk /r on both partitions, put them back in the server, same issue.

So I got the recovery disc out of the box in the garage, ran chkdsk /r again, and figured I'd give it one more time. Worked perfectly.

No issues, no idea why it went weird in the first place, but I'm guessing the disk didn't like me shutting it down when it lost connectivity and was doing something odd.

All works fine now, to celebrate I bought another 2TB drive bringing my server up to 7TB

I also pretty much only use my server for Twonky media sharing and haven't had an issue with twonky itself except when I had one disk drive die and it thought my entire library on all disks were in use, I had to copy everything off the server, remove all disks from the pool and re-add them to fix that issue.

I got to a point that I was sick of sitting at a desk working on a computer all day, and then coming home and doing the same, so I got rid of my desktop, bought this server and now exclusively use laptops. I also wanted something low powered I could leave on to download overnight in off peak periods.

Hey Sicarius123 good to hear CHKDSK /r worked out for ya. Also if you do not have your server protected by a UPS or Battery Backup I would urge you to invest in one and use the add-in Grid Junction to shut the server down in the event of a power failure after a set period of time. This will reduce any drive corruption issues should a power failure occur when a drive is being written to. The shut down would be a controlled shut down and I recommend you set Grid Junction to shut the server down when the battery is at or around 80%.

As for Twonky while I do not require it I have run it in the past and while it has in the past had its issues if you know how to troubleshoot those issues then it will run problem free. If your using the media streaming features in say an HP MSS then you do need to run Twonky but if you ursing it for DLNA devices and want to try out something wicked awesome I would recommend Serviio which you can read about from the link below:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011/06 ... -released/

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Wow, thank you so much for pointing me to serviio, it is impressively better than twonky!

Now if there is a torrent add on this good my server would be perfect!